


Tom the Dinosaur Hunter

by LadyBinx



Category: Jurassic Park (1993), Real Person Fiction, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: AU, Action, Adventure, Dinosaurs, F/M, Pre-Jurassic World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:30:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6044947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBinx/pseuds/LadyBinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A research mission to the original Jurassic Park island goes wrong and they must fight to survive</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tom the Dinosaur Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> This was written by a good friend of mine. He has given me permission to post it as he doesn't have an AO3 account.

The jungle treetops were alive with the sounds of birds and insects. The bright afternoon sun was burning down in the upper canopy, shining off flowers and leaves so brightly that it seemed to make every vivid colour glow slighty. Beneath that, lower in the canopy, the temperature was still cool. Shadows mottled the branches. It was easy for something to be disguised in that disorienting mixture of light and shade. That was where Tom lay, languid on a large bough, head resting between where the bough separated into two smaller branches. His arms and legs dangled on either side of the bough. It wasn’t incredibly secure but it was low-energy, and he intended to wait a long time in these tall treetops. Beneath him the jungle floor was dark and cold. The mud and podzol beneath him was mostly bare apart from the occasional primeval shrub or bush. Long tufts of dark, thick-bladed grass sprouted from the base of every gigantic tree, but otherwise the mud was entirely spongy and brown. A few feet from the base of Tom’s own tree there was a large pool of water. It was about fifteen feet long and thirty feet wide, and very deep. The water slowly collected here, at the bottom of one of the lowest points in the jungle landscape, after leaking through the mud. There were other such pools around the island, but not many. It was a good place to lie in wait.

Tom was wearing simple trousers and a sleeveless vest of scaly reptile flesh, stitched crudely together with sinew. His long hair was intertwined with green and oily-black feathers, longer and stranger than could be found on any normal bird. Black mud streaked across his pale face, his fingers were stained with various substances including sticky fruit-juice and animal blood, and his bare feet were calloused and hard – he could have made himself some soft moccasins for running, but the forest floor was soft and it was easier to climb trees with bare feet. Climbing trees was his best survival technique. Thick bundles of thin rope, hand-woven from the hardy grasses of the island, were slung around his chest and over his shoulders. He wore two reptile-skin belts around his waist. To one he had tied a variety of crude reptile-skin pouches that were tightly sealed. The other served as a holster for various knife-like objects, either made from flint or the giant serrated teeth of some unknown creature. In one hand, dangling from the tree bough, he held a length of wood that was as long as his own lithe body. It was straight and strong, and one end had been knotted with grass-rope to hold another, surgery-sharp, finger-thin, serrated tooth. At the point it was like a needle, and at the base it was as wide as Tom’s own arm.

Tom merely stared at the ground absently, letting the sounds of the jungle wash over him. He was attuned to the dripping moisture of the jungle, the speech of every individual bird, the stir of wind in the high canopy and the scampering rodents on the floor below. He was constantly, unconsciously scenting the jungle air. Suddenly his nostrils twitched. Something was coming. He blinked, his eyes swam back into focus, and suddenly there was an animal hunger in his placid eyes and a violent sneer on his cruel lips. There was a thunderous thrashing in the jungle as the creature suddenly made itself heard. It was making a dash for the pool, aware that predators might be lurking in the dense foliage. Or enemies, at least. This thing had no predators. Tom drew a sharp intake of breath as he identified the shape of the thing amongst the trees.

It was a tyrannosaurus rex, several stories tall. A gigantic specimen, clearly an alpha male in the prime of life. He was basically a biological engine that transported a mouth of huge, uneven, filthy teeth held back by the merest suggestion of scaly lips. Across the top of his square head, his barrel-chest and long, smooth back he had soft, downy near-feathers in varying shades of speckled brown and black. The two tiny vestigial arms, nearly concealed by the thick feathery coat, twitched and grabbed pointlessly, reflexively, as he scented the air. Water seeped up around his clawed feet as he squelched through the mud. The beast’s long, thick, feathery tail whipped back and forth through the ferns and grass, causing most of the noise as it balanced the weight. His mighty lungs worked like the bellows of a terrifying dinosaur god, rattling and rumbling as the giant’s chest expanded and contracted with geological slowness. Its large black eyes, perfectly situated in the front corners of his square head, peering out from amongst the feathery fur, seemed to speak of intelligence. He constantly twitched his head around, back and forth, bird-like, as he took in the surroundings of the pool. His thick neck, made even thicker by a bushy neck-ruff of feathers, could whip his head around fast as lightning. Lightning with teeth as long as Tom’s own hand.

He padded through the mud, long tail rustling the plants, until he finally arrived at the pool directly beneath Tom. Watching the edges of the pool hungrily he lowered his head and let the water run through his teeth, into his mouth. Then he quickly tilted his head back, lifting it so quickly and so high that Tom found it nearly dizzying. The tyrannosaurus did this several more times while Tom lined himself up for his leap. He slowly sat up, propping his spear on the branches in front of him. He lifted a bundle of grass-rope from his shoulder and tied one end to the bough in front of him. He left the end of the rope coiled in front of him. Then slowly, silently, he took a blowpipe from his belt. It was a piece of bamboo the length of his arm, with a thin wad of grass in one end. He slowly took a pouch from his belt, tugged it open with his teeth and poured the powder within down the blowpipe. Some found its way out of the other end but most was held in by the wad of grass. With his pipe in the crook of his elbow, held upright, he tied the pouch again and replaced it on his belt. Then he put one thumb over the end of his pipe, holding it firmly, and finally he pushed the rope from the tree bough at the same instant he leapt out into the air.

He landed squarely on the tyrannosaurus’s neck just as the beast raised his head to swallow more water, which lessened the impact considerably. The dinosaur reacted immediately, thrashing his head around, twisting his powerful neck back and forth like the bucking bronco of some titanic, prehistoric cowboy. Tom had already sunk his free hand deep into the shaggy feathers on the dinosaur’s neck, grabbing a firm hold. Beneath the feathers his neck was just wide enough for Tom’s strong legs to clamp on, clinging with steely thighs, rugged calves hooked underneath the quills and follicles and shafts that sprouted from beneath the dinosaur’s scales. Tom’s torso was slung back and forth like a stone in a sling winding up to be released. The arm dedicated to his blowpipe was jerked around painfully like it might dislocate at any moment. There was a fraction of a second where the conflicting momentum coincided briefly, and Tom could raise his grip higher up the dinosaur’s neck. He thrust himself up towards his head, clambering jerkily through the feathers and up to the base of the beast’s skull while the monster tried to shake him off, trying to bite the top of his own head.

At the very top of the tyrannosaurus’s head, when Tom was getting closest to his objective, it occurred to the dinosaur that he could try rubbing himself against a tree. He lumbered and squelched rapidly, throwing Tom around even more, trying to headbutt the tree. But Tom had swung back to the beast’s neck again, temporarily thwarted, his thumb still over the end of the blowpipe to hold in the powder. The dinosaur bashed his thick skull against the ancient tree trunk, damaging neither but creating a booming ‘thunk’ noise. The dinosaur paused and wobbled briefly on his feet, dizzied by the impact. Tom took advantage of the moment to scramble back up the beast’s head, crest at the very top, and fling his torso down over his face, between his eyes. His head hung out in the air, right above the beast’s mouth. He could feel the heat from its breath washing over his face. He scrambled back a few inches, brought around his blowpipe, and stuck it deep inside the dinosaur’s left nostril. Then, hanging vaguely upside-down from the perplexed, concussed dinosaur’s face, he took a deep breath and blew hard into the pipe. The grass wad at the end flew up into the dinosaur’s sinus, along with the powder in a thick cloud. A few tendrils of powdery smoke even drifted out of the dinosaur’s other nostril.

The dinosaur went vaguely cross-eyed briefly, as much as any creature can with such big, black eyes that couldn’t really meet in the middle. From deep within it came a rumbling growl that rose in pitch slowly – as if it was asking a very slow, very ancient question. When it focussed again, returning to alertness, it seemed disoriented and confused. As it sniffed the air it looked down to find Tom standing in front of it, feathers dangling from his hair and wearing dinosaur skin, legs standing apart and arms by his side, looking straight up at the dinosaur. The dinosaur angled its head slightly, giving one eye a better view of the tiny figure, and then decided that the tiny figure must be his mother. Tom breathed a sigh of relief.

When birds first emerge from their eggs and are presented with a puppet, they will emotionally imprint on that puppet as if it were their mother. Using the puppet allows the animal handler to easily feed them, handle them, and even train them without the chick becoming scared or trying to run away. It doesn’t even need to be a very good puppet. Animals can also imprint on a human without a puppet, but it leads to problems later in life when re-joining the wild. This would probably not be an issue for the mega-tyrannosaurus, mightiest rex on the island. The powder Tom had blown up the bird’s nose had been incredibly hard to make – first foraging for ingredients, then trial and error experiments on tinier dinosaurs to get the recipe correct – but the end result was worth it. The giant carnivorous prehistoric monster thought Tom was his mum.

Lots of flightless birds are precocial, which means they know how to walk and feed themselves instinctively from birth, rather than altricial which means they’re blind, bald, noisy, need to be drip-fed regurgitated matter from their mother’s mouths, and eventually need to learn to fly. Tom was pleased to discover while observing their nests that tyrannosaurs rex were also precocial, because teaching an adult dinosaur how to be an adult dinosaur is always going to be difficult for a six-foot human. Of course, there were still some essential things to teach his new pet.

Tom held out one hand slowly to his side, and the rex followed it curiously, watching the motion. Tom whistled quietly, several times, in the same simple melody. The dinosaur had very rudimentary vocal chords but he growled back, repeating the pattern. This repetition was how baby birds learned to sing, starting to identify their parent’s voice and even learning to reply whilst still inside their egg. But baby birds are stupid, and adult tyrannosaurus rex are intelligent. The monster in front of Tom was learning the pattern much quicker than he could have believed possible. Tom slowly moved his hand forward, reaching out for the rex’s nose. The tyrannosaurus lowered his head until finally Tom could stroke the beast’s snout. Both dinosaur and man cooed appreciatively at each other.

Tom slowly walked over to the tree where he’d left his rope dangling, still tied to the bough he’d been lying on. The dinosaur watched him curiously, even taking a few steps to follow him. Tom gave the rope an experimental tug. It was still tightly fastened. He’d intended to use it as an escape route if the dinosaur had thrown him off. Thankfully it hadn’t been necessary, but either way he wasn’t about to leave rope just hanging around, and his spear was still up the tree. Both had been hard to make. He shimmied up the rope, alternating moving his hands and his legs, contracting and expanding like a quick caterpillar. He was back on his bough within a moment. He picked up his spear, untied the rope, slung it back around his chest and shoulder, then clambered down the tree the way he had originally arrived.  
The dinosaur slowly approached him, nudging Tom with his snout as Tom descended, threatening to push him from the tall tree entirely. Tom responded by slowly continuing his climb, and finally walking around to the dinosaur’s haunch, stroking him and cooing all the while. The dinosaur watched him with one eye, head still twitching curiously. Tom threw a rope over the dinosaur’s back, ducked under the rex’s chest to grab the rope again on the other side, and then tied it around one of the vestigial arms. Ducking under again, he used the dangling rope to pull himself one-handed onto the beast’s back. His other hand still clutched his favourite spear. 

The dinosaur patiently allowed this, wondering what its mother was up to, but trusting Tom implicitly like only an infant animal could. Tom settled back on the monster’s neck much more comfortably this time, stroking it reassuringly. He gave an experimental flick of the rope still tied to the dinosaur’s arm. The dinosaur looked at him quizzically for a moment and Tom was suddenly terrified that all of this hard work and danger had been for nothing. Then the dinosaur seemed to accept that its mum was just going to sit in that random spot for a while, and that it might as well go and find some food in the meantime. It moved off with slow, lumbering, squelching steps in the mud. Tom had to duck to avoid the branches that passed rapidly over the dinosaur’s head. He made a mental note that more training, a proper harness, and a proper saddle would all be required. For now the thing needed a name.

“Jaguar,” Tom said with satisfaction. The dinosaur rumbled a meaningless reply.

Since Jaguar was such a prime example of an alpha male, he presumably had a brood of tyrannosaurus hens somewhere nearby – another way in which raptor dinosaurs were like other flightless birds. Each male would father several clutches of eggs with several different females, and help the females protect them all. Male tyrannosaurus were aggressively territorial, but only with other males. It was almost a human characteristic. Tom was probably going to have to meet Jaguar’s various girlfriends at some point, which would be a tense encounter and they’d probably try to eat him. But he had more powder in his pouches and he had their king between his legs. He fancied his chances, and grinned cockily as he rode the dinosaur through the jungle.

Glancing up briefly to the sky above the pool, before they lost sight of it completely in the jungle canopy, he caught sight of a tiny patch of a tiny contrail. The blue sky had a white line being traced across it slowly, ever so slowly. He sneered dismissively at the tiny patch of blue sky and rode his gigantic dinosaur deeper into the jungle.

But this particular plane would be different.

*

The island’s asphalt landing strip had been swallowed up by the jungle greenery within only a few years of the island being abandoned. It had been built in the middle of a man-made clearing with the foliage cut back to a safe distance, but that had been reclaimed too. Beneath the saplings, grass, ferns and moss the only remaining sign that planes had once landed here was a cracked, root-covered outline of asphalt slowly getting lost beneath the leaf-layers. One day it would be entirely swallowed back into the earth, and maybe future archaeologists would ponder the anomalous volcanic strata in thick layers of loose, rich, dark mud.

This made it necessary to air-drop the equipment out of the plane. From the ground it looked like the plane was letting out little white puffs of cloud to join the contrail, but as they descended each one quickly grew into a series of massive fabric parachutes that flapped deafeningly in the wind. They carried boxes, crates and even a large vehicle. They crashed down amongst the grass and sapling trees where the airstrip had once been. Once the crates had all settled a handful of actual humans landed too, having jumped last to watch where the supplies landed.

The humans quickly busied themselves with unpacking all the crates, checking the machinery, and setting up defensive positions around the overgrown clearing. A dozen soldiers with gigantic black rifles were fanned out in a circle like the numbers on a clock, surrounding the scientists and explorers. Everyone was wearing camouflage clothing, survival harnesses covered with equipment, carbon-fibre armour on their chests, forearms and calves, and big leather boots. As the soldiers took up stations, several of them detached tiny devices from clip-on pockets. One by one they held them out in flat hands, spoke into their radios, and then the devices started emiting tiny, quiet whirring noises. Eventually, after much negotiation over the radio for each device, each one started gently hovering. After several minutes there were five drone-scouts languidly circling the clearing like fish around a lagoon. Slowly they all made their way out into the wider jungle, silently exploring the trees and wildlife. Deep within the electronics of the main vehicle there were several technicians controlling these drones, watching the screens avidly, reporting anything they found to the soldiers and scientists. Apart from the chatter of the soldiers and the muted, hushed conversations of the scientists, the only noise in the clearing was the buzz of insects and the rush of wind high above the tall, dark trees.

Despite all the high-tech drone scouts, the advanced night vision goggles, and even a few basic binoculars, nobody had any idea how many pairs of eyes were watching them from the dark green landscape – some interested and curious, others malevolent and hungry. 

The daylight was fading quickly by the time the vehicle’s engine was finally deemed to be safe, and it roared into life with a burst of diesel fumes. Birds erupted from the trees all around the clearing, shocked into the air by the sudden unfamiliar noise. The engine was briefly drowned out by the cries of startled animals. Silence descended once again as the surrounding, unseen animals all waited and listen to the low, throaty rumble of the engine. It was a kind of low, flat tank with heavy caterpillar treads along each side and cannon-sized gun turrets on each corner. It was the size of a small house, with room inside for all of the mission’s personnel to squeeze in for protection. It was partially hinged in the middle, with a kind of leathery waistband that allowed the vehicle to bend wildly. Two huge exhaust pipes protruded from either end like snub noses. Indeed, both ends were identical like it was designed to have no specific backwards or forwards preference. Headlamps were augmented by big halogen lamps beneath each gun turret. Radio antenna and a satellite dish poked out of the roof, along with folding solar panels and a water purifier. The thing had no windows, only tiny slits. 

It was quickly turned off again, ready for the next day. The silence as the engine died was psychologically heavy. Slowly the animals started to recover, each one piping up uncertainly in case they caused the thunder to return. Soon the babble of noise washed over the clearing once again as though nothing had ever disturbed it.

After hours of guard duty and watching the drifting, tiny specks of drone scouts emerging from the treeline, the soldiers were fairly disappointed in the lack of terrifying dinosaurs. A few had made camp, setting up tents from the back of the vehicle. The electric lights came on as the sun went down, attracting giant bugs that swarmed silently around the campsite. The growing darkness of the night also brought a louder chorus of animal noises in the pitch-black jungle. Whooping birds and screeching rodents and croaking bullfrogs all conspired to keep the explorers awake. It also hid the noise of approaching doom.

Doctor Nellie Guernica was one of the multi-specialist scientists who had spent months training for this expedition. The altered genetics and forced ecosystems of the island were a fascinating source of data for various fields, much more valuable than the still-burning underground coal fires of Centralia or even the ruins of Pripyat and Chernobyl. She had been patiently tutored in survival techniques for jungle situations, learning field medicine and how to set traps along with the basics like cooking, finding water, and how to build a crude shelter. But they hadn’t taught her how to get to sleep when the animals outside were having a party, seemingly celebrating her first night on the expedition of a lifetime. The flimsy tent did nothing to quiet the sounds of the night outside – the animals, the soldiers tramping across the thick grass, even the buzz of the halogen lamps that glowed through the thin fabric. She couldn’t wait until the morning when she’d start taking genetic samples from everything in sight, painstakingly looking for mutations across the entire ecological spectrum – and, of course, examining the engineered specimens for unexpected developments. Petitioning the company to release the DNA codes for the original creations had also been the process of several months, and had required torso-thick Non-Disclosure Agreements. In her rustling space-fabric tent and insulating, cosy sleeping bag, she grinned and wriggled with pleasure at the thought that everything had been worth it.

It felt like no time at all had passed, and Nellie was still staring at the tent’s fabric glowing from the electric lights outside, when she heard a soldier’s radio bark into life on the far side of the camp. It hissed out words urgently. The soldier replied and then the noise of the night was blown apart by sudden gunfire. Soldiers were shouting everywhere now, the lights had become even brighter, and there was the sound of thrashing in trees. Branches and boughs creaked under massive weights. 

Something roared.

She had seen video footage of the dinosaurs, and heard audio samples, and listened to all the survivor’s accounts several times each. Nothing compared to the air-trembling, ground-shaking screech that vibrated the fabric of her tent. She sat bolt upright immediately, her worst nightmare suddenly occurring around her. She heard the thumping, rapid footsteps of the monsters now, since stealth had been abandoned. She could hear the soldiers shouting outside.

“Fire up the main cannons! Open fire!”

Machine-gun fire, the muzzle-flash glowing through her tent wall, the silhouette of a soldier distorted and twisted by the bizarre angle.

“Why didn’t the drones see them?”

“Shut up and keep firing!”

Shotgun explosions.

“Everyone get to the tank! To the tank!” screamed one of the soldiers. Nellie tore open the flaps of her tent and sprinted across the wet grass outside, nearly blinded by the floodlights of the vehicle, her bare feet and legs whipped by long tendrils of wet grass. The air smelled of gunfire and blood. A soldier screamed somewhere, and there were more gunshots.

“They got Paul! They got Paul! There’s too many of them!”

“Get to the damn tank!” bellowed the commander, insistent.

Machine guns again.

A dinosaur screeching. Wounded. Dying. Had it taken this long for the soldiers to take out even one of the dinosaurs?

Nellie froze in terror, realising in her disorientation that between her and the tank there was a raptor. She hadn’t seen it, blinded by the light of the tank. Now she was barely a few feet from it. It reared up as the tank behind it finally roared into life. The dinosaur didn’t bother to turn, now entirely focussed on Nellie, so it didn’t notice the stubby, wide-mouthed cannons of the tank turn and swivel silently and lightning-fast, through several awkward rotations until finally one was pointed at the raptor’s back. Nellie could only stare at the black claws of the feathery beast in front of her. The feathery sleeves of the beast were tipped with three pointed obsidian daggers, and the black eyes amongst the feathers stared dispassionately from above a smiling maw of ice-white teeth. Mercifully its gigantic feet-claws were hidden in the long grass, but the beast was rearing back now, getting ready to launch itself at Nellie’s pale, vulnerable, near-naked body. Nellie screamed, turned, and sprinted back the way she had come – away from the bright light and into the darker edges of the clearing.

There was an explosion and suddenly the raptor was wrapped in a net, weighted at the corners so that the fibres of the net entwined the dinosaur before anyone could even blink. Nellie was too terrified to turn around and see that she was no longer being pursued. The gunfire was giving way to screams, and the roaring of dinosaurs was growing bolder. From where Nellie was now running she could get a sense of how they were chirping and barking across the clearing to each other, coordinating their massive assault. She’d never imagined that a velociraptor social group could be so large or so intelligent. She had barely believed the stories about how they could spontaneously intuit how to open doors, but now she could see how their animal cunning was enhanced by a malevolent, desperate deviousness. The leaders of the numerous pack were hanging back in the shadows, grey feathers melting into the shadows of trees, watching how the humans reacted. They were testing the vehicle, learning the tactics of these newcomers.

In order to even recognise humans as a threat, they must have remembered something of the humans who had once abandoned the island. But that had been at least a generation ago. In the back of her mind Nellie wondered at the corvid-like intelligence, mirroring how crows and ravens could remember certain humans for generations, somehow passing on descriptions, techniques for earning favour and affection, tricks for solving puzzles, etc. The smartest birds could solve puzzles that would even baffle some humans. They formed intricate hierarchies and social networks over hundreds of miles. As Nellie ran on into the jungle she could hear the barking and chirping of dinosaurs out in the darkness, echoing amongst the trees, further and further away, messages being relayed out into the landscape…

She tripped and fell on the first large root that she encountered, banging her foot painfully and then falling face-first into the deep mud, which at least cushioned her fall. She could have bashed her skull against another tree root, or fallen onto another damn ravenous monster, but the leaf mould welcome her in gently. Ferns and grasses swept back into place above her, and as she pulled her face from the freezing, sucking mud she realised she was quite effectively concealed. Terrified, her instincts screamed that she should lie still and hope that the smell of blood and gunpowder nearby would overpower her scent trail. She covered her head with her hands and listened to the sound of the battle. There were more screams, and more gunfire, but the dinosaurs were roaring more and more. The dinosaurs were simply faster, and stealthier, and working together like a tightly choreographed clockwork death machine. For every dead dinosaur, at least two soldiers died. And there were so many more dinosaurs still left waiting in the jungle.

Eventually all the shooting finally stopped, and the screaming was quickly silenced with roaring and ripping noises. The diesel engine was still rumbling loudly, and it nearly covered the chirping raptors and gleeful meat-tearing, chewing, smacking noises. Slowly the diesel engine grew louder and the wheels started turning, and the tank crept across the grass. The raptors barked at it, and there were a few roars and clangs and the scratching of claws on metal armour, but they couldn’t break into the heavy tank. As the vehicle rumbled away and the raptors lost interest, Nellie’s terror grew even greater. They were leaving her behind! They must think she was dead, like all the others! Maybe one of the remote drones would find her before the tank got too far away? The raptors hadn’t, and the drones were demonstrably much worse at detecting things in the jungle. Who even knew how many of the tiny buzzing gadgets were left roaming the jungle? She wouldn’t be found if she stayed where she was, but if she got up then the remaining raptors would tear her apart and eat her. She wept in whispers.

“Help, don’t leave,” she croaked to herself, not so much crying for help as offering up a silent plea – a prayer to some god of abandoned islands that she wouldn’t die here in the mud, alone and forgotten. But the tank treads continued to grow quieter, and the engine’s roar faded away in the thick trunks of the trees, and the dinosaurs calmed down. Now the only noise was the returning night-time squawking of birds as though a dozen highly trained soldiers hadn’t been just been massacred by mutant monsters from the past. The raptors occasionally chirped at each other, fighting over scraps of meat. Nellie’s tears still flowed freely, into the freezing mud. Her exposed body was shivering involuntarily, partly from the cold air, partly from the water gathering around her thighs, torso and feet, and partly from the shock. She cried even more when she remembered how excited she had been. And then she cried even more, surprising herself, when she remembered how much time and effort had been spent on setting up this foolish death-trap that had so quickly fallen apart. Self-loathing started to set in. She’d been lectured about survivor’s guilt but it was creeping up more quickly than she’d expected.

Eventually she had no tears left in her body, and she was surrendering to exhaustion. The mud wasn’t that cold anymore, maybe because her body had warmed it up or maybe because she was suffering from more symptoms of shock. Or maybe she was dying of exposure and hypothermia, in which case she was supposed to fight the urge to sleep, but she was so very tired, and what did it matter if she joined the other members of her expedition that had died. Her eyes drooped.

She was woken up – or had she ever been asleep? – by a much louder, much more terrifying roar. The ground was trembling now with the weight and strength of a different beast. The raptors were chirping and barking to each other again, but there was a different sense of urgency. This time there was fear. The raptors were all sprinting away, vanishing as quickly and silently as they had arrived, leaving behind nothing but the smell of blood. They must have satisfied themselves enough for one night, and now the disappearing noise of tiny, quick footfalls was lost amongst the booming thunder. As the beast arrived, the thunder grew quiet, and the new, booming footfalls felt softer. No doubt some giant scavenger attracted by the smell of fresh meat.

“Steady, Jaguar! Easy, boy!” shouted a man.

“What?” said Nellie, raising her head. She lifted herself onto weak, trembling limbs and emerged from beneath the ferns that had kept her safe throughout the attack. 

Absent-mindedly dusting the mud and twigs from herself, she slowly picked her way across the jungle floor, avoiding the root that had tripped her. She couldn’t see much in the darkness now that the tank had departed with its giant electric lights, but the moon was nearly three-quarters full and the stars were bright. So she could see the giant tyrannosaurus in the clearing, and the humanoid figure riding it. The dinosaur came to a stop, peering around the clearing with beady black eyes. The human on its back whistled a strange tune as he slipped off the tail, and the tyrannosaur stayed still with a dog-like discipline. The human wearing dinosaur-skins picked across the clearing, tutting at the remains of the other humans.

“Help!” Nellie squeaked, struggling back into the clearing, lifting up one hand to wave as her knees gave way beneath her and she collapsed weakly back onto the ground. The man’s head snapped around, and in just a few loping, sprinting moments he was at her side. Even in her exhaustion she was stunned by his piercing blue eyes.

“Help,” said Nellie again, “We came from the mainland to study the dinosaurs. We thought we had everything we needed. They killed everyone. We didn’t know anyone was here. What are you doing here? They’ve killed everyone,” she whispered as she sobbed, the grief fresh again.

The man’s eyes roamed her body, checking for injuries.

“Is there anyone else alive?” she said between gasps, knowing it was foolish to hope.

The man’s eyes bored into hers as he gazed mournfully, pitifully, into her face.

“Can you speak English?” she asked, wondering briefly why he wasn’t replying.

The man reached to his belt and untied a gourd. From the sloshing noise it seemed to contain water. He untied the stopper and offered her some. She took a few massive gulps and felt the icy water sluicing down her throat, spreading out into her body. She was amazed at how much more alive she felt.

“Nellie,” she said, gesturing at herself. Then she gestured, open-palmed, at the man, inviting him to say his name.

“I can speak English,” he whispered, his blue eyes still pitying her.

“Oh! Well, what’s your name?”

“Tom,” he said, standing up and taking her offered hand, “It’s not safe here. Come on.”  
He hauled her to her feet and supported her with one steel-strong sinewy arm, around her back and under her shoulder. They started walking towards the vigilant dinosaur, who watched Nellie curiously. The air was so thick with the stink of blood that she gagged.

The dinosaur seemed to be waiting for instruction from Tom, who held her close and helped her climb the crude leather harness. The dinosaur grumbled, and if an earthquake could make noises like a bird then it would sound like the tyrannosaurus. It didn’t occur to her that she should resist – she was just trying not to look at the bodies of her colleagues, strewn in pieces around the clearing. She was shaking as she sat atop the feathery dinosaur’s body, once again suffering from shock. Part of her was thrilling at how she was actually riding on a tyrannosaurus rex, feeling the feathers beneath her bare thighs. But of course most of her brain was completely shut down, finally surrendering to exhaustion and trauma. She barely felt Tom mounting up behind her, strong arms either side of her torso as he raised the reins and urged the dinosaur onwards. She relaxed backwards into his body and finally gave up on consciousness, soothed into a kind of troubled sleep by the rhythm of the dinosaur’s accelerating pace, and the unexpected relief of this unbelievable rescue.

*

She woke to the sensation of warm sunlight on her face, and animal furs on her bare arms and legs. Blinking the blurriness from her eyes, she found she was lying beneath skins and furs of tiny animals stitched into a larger, warmer blanket. She was still only wearing her vest and underwear. There were trousers and jackets scattered on the floor around her – black nylon, presumably scavenged from the laboratory and island base that had been here years ago. The blanket beneath her was stuffed with what felt like feathers, but it probably came from dinosaurs. The ceiling above her was made from a few bamboo sticks, with palms and other giant leaves thatched across it to keep out the rain. The sun was coming from a window-like gap in the thatched wall next to her, low to the horizon – she couldn’t tell if it was coming up or going down. She blinked at it, squinted, and rose to a sitting position, throwing the grim-but-soft bedding off her. She stared around at the improbable hut while memories from the previous night started to make themselves known.

The cold. The dark. The blood. The raptors in the night. So many of her friends screaming and dying. The rest of her friends abandoning her. The piercing blue eyes riding into the clearing on a thunder-lizard.

The room was cool and well-ventilated but she was sweating again. The sunlight filtering through the thatched walls and shining through the window-hatch made the shadows seem deeper. There were herbs hanging from the sticks that supported the ceiling, along with drying gourds clonking and glonging together gently in the invisible breeze. Scraps of fabric had been used to tie the sticks together, and it looked like some of it had once been clothing or even parachutes. Cardboard boxes had been flattened into various rotting mats on the uneven dirt floor. Plastic ice-coolers and crates were stacked in the corners of the room. Dried flowers were arranged in knots around the window-hatch, their scent still filling the room. She experimentally lifted one of the lids on the plastic coolers, and discovered that it contained scraps of meat wrapped in cling-film. As she was lowering the lid back down, she lost her grip, and it tumbled noisily to the floor. She hurriedly picked it up and replaced it, but she was too late.

The light filtering through the thatch wall was obscured, in the shape of a man.

“Come outside,” Tom said. His British accent was deep and quiet, obviously not used to speaking that much anymore, but with the throaty growl of authority.  
She took a moment to locate the thatched door, untie the ‘latch’ and creak it open by gently lifting and pushing it. The sun outside was blindingly bright, and she had to blink away even more blurry sleepiness, but it was warm on her skin. Tom was just simply standing in front of the thatch hut, wearing nothing but his dinosaur-skin trousers. He was standing in front of a cooking fire that was dribbling smoke into the sky, with several large cooking pots suspended over the heat, and lumps of mud and warming stones gathered around the fringe. Several yards from the hut there was a cliff face, where the ground dropped away suddenly. The high ground was clear around the hut, apart from one giant, gnarled tree looming up over the hut, which presumably provided some shade from the sun. Further away from the hut the treeline began, with leafy bamboo and dense foliage sprouting up immediately.

The sunlight traced the outline of every lean, sinewy muscle that slowly pulsed with his slow breathing. He had unconsciously adopted a wide stance, his spear planted in the ground at his side, held at muscular arm’s length. He was watching her with a hunter’s intensity – unapologetic, face-on, unblinking, drinking her in.

“Hello,” she said, self-conscious in her underpants, standing side-on to him, resisting the urge to dance from foot to foot.

“Hello,” he said.

“Um, thank you for saving me,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said, a half-smile half-appearing in the very slightest corners of his mouth.

“I came with a team. Did you save any others?” she asked, trying not to think about what she’d seen.

“They were all dead. I’m sorry. Only the ones in the tank got away,” he said. He sounded like he was struggling to recall some words, and how to pronounce them. Nellie wondered how long he had been alone here.

“There weren’t supposed to be that many raptors,” she said quietly, “And how did they get so smart? What happened on this island?!” There was a lot of emotion burning at the fringes of her mind but she was trying not to pay attention to it. If she kept thinking about it, she would never stop, and there were matters that needed her attention. One of them was standing right in front of her. She took a deep breath and tried not to tremble under his unflinching, merciless gaze.

“Who are you?” she asked, shaking her thoughts from her head.

“I’m Tom,” he said simply.

“Yes, you mentioned. What… I mean, how did you get here?” she spluttered, desperately trying to find the right question that would unravel his entire story.

“I was one of the technicians at the original facility. When everyone left, I stayed,” he said simply.

“You’ve been here ever since the original incident?”

“The incident? Is that what you’re calling it? How long has it been?” he asked, but he sounded like he was barely interested.

“It happened back in 1993, so 22 years ago. You’ve been here on your own for over two decades? How old were you when it began? You must have only been in your early twenties?” she said, inspecting his face for lines or other signs of aging. He looked only early-thirties but mathematically he must have been at least forty.

“You must be hungry,” he said, startling her with sudden motion. He darted past her in long-legged, graceful strides and vanished into the darkness of the hut.

“Ravenous,” she said, realising it was true. He emerged from the hut carrying two plastic bowls and two plastic spoons.

“I have stew and bread,” he said, handing her a bowl. Their fingers brushed together as she took it, and for her it felt like electricity had arced across their skins, but he showed no sign of noticing it. He knelt by the cooking fire, sitting on a log, and lifted the lid from one stainless steel cooking pot. There was a ladle handing inside, which he used to spoon out some delicious-smelling stew.

“Can… do you have any trousers I can put on?” she asked.

“You didn’t see the clothes inside? Why didn’t you put them on?” he asked, not looking up from the fire.

“Because I… you…” she floundered lamely but then turned and stomped back into the hut, pulling on her trousers and her jacket. She found her boots but they seemed so big and cumbersome, and the ground outside was flat and soft, so she remained barefoot. Then she hurried outside, following the smell of food. She sat on a log next to the fire, a polite distance from him but not all the way opposite. He wordlessly held out the bowl he had filled, and she swapped it for her empty one. The stew did indeed smell amazing.

“What time of day is it?” she asked. Tom was using a sturdy stick to nudge one of the lumps of clay at the side of the fire. He slowly drew it towards him, and then stabbed down with the end of the stick, smashing it – inside was a spongy kind of flatbread. He tore it in half and offered her the larger half. She took it and tried a tiny bite. It was some kind of cornbread, tasting of yams and sweet potato.

“Afternoon. So tell me,” he said, sitting back on his log with his stew bowl and his lump of veggie-bread, “What’s happened in the world, in twenty years?”

“Uh, well,” she said, gulping to buy herself time, “Actually nothing very much, really, I suppose. The wars are getting worse, the internet’s getting huge now. You wouldn’t believe it. Technology in general has become pretty magical… there’s been some cool new movies… we landed more spaceships on Mars, and there’s way more terrorism now… the environment is getting more messed up… oh, the latest American president is black, so that’s pretty cool… a lot of the country is still pretty racist though so not much has really changed. I guess it depends what you’re interested in?”

“Genetics,” he replied.

“Really? Me too!” she exclaimed, “We’ve been making such huge developments! We’ve started rolling out gene therapy to treat cancer. We’re getting really good at cloning now, although it’s still pretty illegal. You won’t believe the advances that we’ve made in stem cell research. Our latest genetic hybrids are really stable.”  
Tom listened patiently, staring into the fire, chewing thoughtfully on his bread.

“As I expected,” he sighed eventually.

“You don’t seem happy about it,” Nellie observed cautiously, “We’re making a lot of progress. Scientific understanding is advancing in leaps and bounds.”

“Scientific knowledge is advancing in leaps and bounds,” Tom corrected, “Scientific wisdom hasn’t changed at all. Did you see the feathers on the dinosaurs? They weren’t designed that way. They were designed to have scales and there’s no genetic information saying that feathers might ever occur. And yet here we are.”

“Uh, that’s actually exactly what I came to find out.”

“Really?” asked Tom, interest briefly flickering across his stern brow.

“I’m a geneticist. I wanted to find out about how things are progressing here. This island is unlike anything else in the world. It defies all the simulations. The feathers are actually really… weird,” she said, thinking about the fluffy raptors scientifically for the first time.

“Yes. And their intelligence is unexpected, too. Do you think it’s because they’re purely artificial life forms, they’re more genetically plastic?”

“More prone to mutation, you mean? The nucleotide interactions are certainly less predictable than we thought. But we’d see much greater variety if it was just a randomisation process. Why would they all develop down the same lines?”

“Evolution?” Toms shrugged.

“Sure, but I mean, the raptors and other small dinosaurs have a heat retention problem, obviously, so there’s selection pressure for having feathers, because they’ll be less prone to hypothermia,” she said excitedly, “But the same isn’t true of the other big dinosaurs, like your tyrannosaurus for example. In an ecosystem with limited food but reliable weather patterns they’d surely just get larger. Instead they appear to have gotten smarter? So what’s happening? It kind of reminds me of when you try to paint over ink and the ink bleeds through – are the original genetic traits of the dinosaurs starting to assert themselves despite the customised modifications? Is the original genetic code healing somehow, and rejecting the alterations we used to fill in the incomplete template?”

“It’s impossible to say,” he grunted, “That explanation sounds pretty fantastical. Maybe there’s a factor you haven’t considered?”

“I guess you must have thought about this fairly thoroughly,” said Nellie, apologetically.

“Only for the first few years,” Tom said, tearing into his bread, “Then I realised something.”

“Oh?”

“If we ever figure it out, it won’t matter. The businessmen will think they understand the… well, the original ‘incident’ as you called it. They’ll try to make another theme park, and this time they’ll be able to control everything better. But they won’t, because they can’t, and more people will die. I assume you still have businessmen? Assholes in suits who think the world is a spreadsheet?” Tom said, staring moodily into the fire. He still had that same patient tone, like he was reciting lines from a script that was far away and barely remembered.

“They did try again. Just last year,” said Nellie softly.

“And?”

“Lots of people died.”

“There’s your scientific ‘understanding’ right there,” he nodded sadly.

“And you know better, do you?” she demanded, frustrated by hearing the same anti-science argument here, in this unlikely place, that had been such a popular theme with the press and politicians in the weeks after the latest disaster.

“Without any human contact for twenty years I still accurately predicted what would happen, so manifestly yes.”

“Confirmation bias. Anyone who predicts vague disaster will be right eventually, because disaster happens all the time.”

“Yes,” Tom stated simply.

“You’re saying we shouldn’t try to learn more about the world, because of the inevitable negative consequences?”

“I don’t need to make a deal with the devil to acquire knowledge more quickly,” he said, flashing his blue eyes towards her defiantly.

“If it could save lives tomorrow, would you make the deal?”

“I don’t care,” he grunted.

“But people-” she began, but he interrupted.

“People left me here and never came back. I lit signal fires because I saw boats on the horizon. I wrote ‘help’ in sticks on the beach because I saw planes overhead. 

None of them ever approached my island. They were probably banned from doing so by the businessmen. Most of those businessmen are probably dead by now but the rule remains. I was trapped here by paperwork. In my time here I’ve come to realise that people aren’t the world.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nellie, her heart sinking as he unburdened himself.

“Time loses all meaning, here on my own. The first few years I was angry. Madness has come and gone, maybe many times. For a little while, only a few years, I thought people might be imaginary. Maybe I was a monkey, or a dinosaur even, who was driven crazy by a long-ago dream of something called people. And you know what happened when I thought people were imaginary? Absolutely nothing. The world didn’t explode, the animals went about their business, and the universe span on. Then I realised it didn’t matter whether people were real, because people don’t matter, and I would never see them ever again. Sometimes I thought I was the last human in the world, and that maybe disease or war had wiped all the rest of you out. When the dinosaurs finally got me, that would be the end of humanity. I felt no emotion about that at all, and neither did anything else in the world. I stopped caring about people a long time ago.”

“Your friends, though? Your family?”

“Yes,” said Tom simply.

Nellie struggled for something to say in reply to that, but failed. There was a quiet moment of awkward silence that stretched out. Nellie listened despondently to the crackling fire and birdsong of the jungle.

“We’re here now, though,” Nellie said tentatively.

“Maybe,” grunted Tom, “And not as many as when you got here.”

“Speaking of dinosaurs, where has your… friend gone?” Nellie asked, gulping down the surprising sob that threatened to burst from her throat.

“He’s probably scavenging nearby. He’ll come when I call,” said Tom.

Nellie suddenly looked down at her stew in horror.

“Scavenging?” she asked, disgust building quickly in her torso and up her oesophagus.

“I won’t let him eat your friends,” Tom said, equally quickly, “And for what it’s worth, we’re eating raptor meat. The bastards may be cunning with overwhelming numbers, but catch one alone and they’re just spiteful little lunchtime snacks.”

“Thanks,” said Nellie quietly, and in the expectant pause she said something she felt was expected of her: “Tastes like chicken.”

“After lunch we’ll go and find your other friends. That tank of theirs looked pretty spectacular. I bet some of them will even survive into the evening, probably.”

*

Nellie and Tom were up a tree, looking out at the most alien thing Nellie had ever seen. Perched between the branches that Tom had helped her into, she was downwind of a clearing in the jungle. The creatures in the clearing couldn’t see or smell her but she could certainly see and smell them. 

There were several large clumps of foliage around the clearing, respectful distances apart – which in this case meant several dozen meters, because the clumps and creatures were both massive. Nellie quickly realised that clumps was the wrong word, because these were nests. The female tyrannosaurs had made crude dishes out of thick branches and piled sticks. The females were smaller than Tom’s friend Jaguar, more similar to the skeletons that Nellie had seen in natural history museums around the world. Their feathers were sleeker than Jaguar’s more ostentatious and attention-seeking plumage, with more muted shades of browns and blacks. In each nest there were at least a dozen eggs.

The eggs were barely as big as Nellie’s head, and she was amazed that something so massive could start off in something so small. Each nest had a female nesting on top of it – legs astride the egg clutch, warm feathers and body heat incubating the vulnerable eggs. In some nests the dinosaur occupant slept, its head tucked down into the nest. In others the female patiently watched Jaguar as it strutted proudly amongst the brood, showing off while it kept a watchful eye on the edges of the clearing. Possibly the most surprising aspect of the scene was that the females clucked and cooed to each other soothingly. It was a kind of peaceful white noise whose interruption would signal danger, and doom for whoever trespassed.

Tom nudged her on the shoulder and she followed him back down the tree. They walked silently around the clearing until they were upwind, letting the dinosaurs smell them. Then they slowly picked their way across the jungle and emerged from the jungle wall. The cooing and clucking of the females stopped immediately, and several of them raised their heads. They watched the humans with solid-black eyes, expressionless faces betraying no emotion. Nellie had been scared of many things in her life, most of all just recently, but being warily regarded by several brooding gigantic dinosaurs was somehow the scariest. She was not only facing down a thunder lizard who would die to protect its clutch of eggs, she was also asking it to trust her. Jaguar was immediately wary, staying several meters away and eyeing up Tom while it decided to charge. Tom made some kind of whistling noise and Jaguar recognised its friend – that is, much like a cat, Jaguar decided to ignore Tom completely and offered him only the courtesy of not mauling him to death and eating his still-warm remains. The tyrannosaur returned to its pompous patrol of the nesting site.

Tom carefully walked up to the nearest female tyrannosaur, approaching it from the front and a little to the side, maintaining eye contact with one hand outstretched in front of him. Nellie was left behind, standing awkwardly, watching pensively, too scared to speak. The dinosaur watched him, twitching its gigantic head uncertainly, but Tom started making soothing clucking noises like the other females. The dinosaur blinked at him, and then looked away with disinterest. This was the tyrannosaurus rex version of acceptance. He stroked one of its feathers cautiously for several minutes, and slowly the entire clearing was filled once more with the peaceful cooing and clucking of female tyrannosaurs. Finally, he beckoned to Nellie. She came forward, the same way Tom had. The dinosaur jerked its head and stared down at the newcomer with one eye. As she got closer, it lowered its head and sniffed her curiously. The dinosaur’s teeth were level with her face, each one bigger than her nose. Her ponytail swept out behind her in a sudden huff of hot, stinking air from the dinosaur’s nostrils. She put her hand in Tom’s. Together they both stroked the tyrannosaurus rex mother, and it seemed to blink happily. She could feel the far-off thunder of its heartbeat.

*

The tank was covered with dents and the scars of claws, but it had come to rest at the end of a gulch in the jungle. It was a narrow, tall space with thick mud walls and the jungle trees rearing up over that. The raptors were occasionally watching from the top of the valley walls. At first any that had braved the steep and slippery  
slope had broken their legs on landing and then been shot in the head. Then the surviving humans had started sniping the raptors that dared to look over the edge. The same was true of the gully mouth where the raptors waited just beyond view. The jungle insects didn’t even have the decency to shut up while the humans huddled inside the tank, staring out of the tank slits with shaking rifles. There should have been a tense silence. Instead it felt like business as usual. The five surviving scientists had just seen all their friends and colleagues get torn apart in a running day-long battle of exhaustion and attrition, and it was like the world didn’t even care.

The walls of the tank were covered with chains and pipes, bundles of wires, pressure gauges, fuel needles, various panels with switches and large red triggers, and of course the steering controls. In one corner the radio hissed with patient futility. A bank of screens and joysticks were where the drones had once been controlled from, but each one had been lost to accident or malice during the course of the terrible day. The screens only showed static now, with blinking green words that said ‘signal lost’. Scientific equipment was squeezed into every available space, along with operation manuals for the DNA sequencers and such. Nobody had thought to include manuals for the net-cannons and gun turrets which had been exhausted of ammunition.

There was more in the storage lockers in the floor of the tank but none of the scientists had been shown how to reload them – an hour of battling with apertures and sliding chambers and things that should have worked, if the universe was a place of sanity, had resulted in one gun jamming and another misfiring. Technically there were bunks lined up along the centre of the space but all of them were too small to accommodate any living human. Two of the survivors were pointing their chunky automatic rifles out of the side facing the gully entrance, while the other three watched the remaining sides in case it started raining velociraptors again.

A gun went off with a loud bang. Nobody bothered to ask whose it was. The scientists had long become accustomed to the deafening echo ringing around the tank, and the precious seconds for which they’d all lose hearing. It was hard to make out anything at the mouth of the gully now, with the sun filtering through the high jungle leaves on the horizon and shining directly through the two muddy walls through which the tank had squeezed.

“We can’t stay here,” whispered Jane, for the fifth time, once their hearing had returned.

“We can’t get out,” muttered Olive.

“We have no choice,” said Richard.

“Shut up, Olive,” snapped Smith, finally becoming infuriated with Olive’s pointless negativity, “Richard is right. Jane is right. We can’t stay here. We need to make a break for it. We can aim for the coast, put the sea behind us, and hold out until extraction.”

“We can funnel them into a choke-point here. On the beach we’re totally exposed. If they attack en masse then we’re all fucked,” growled Hugo, who was covering the gully mouth with a steely-eyed gaze.

“Stop talking like you know what you’re doing, Hugo! You’re a damn botanist!” shouted Smith.

“And chess player,” Hugo said, “We just need to hold out here for a few days, thin their numbers, and we make a break for it when the time is right.”

“That makes sense,” said Richard, and the conversation once again devolved into trying to convince Richard, who had the swing vote, until finally the validity of democracy itself was questioned.

“Hold on down there!” a voice suddenly called from outside, echoing strangely off the soft gully walls, “We’ve got you!”

“Who was -?!” demanded Smith, trying to peer up through the narrow slit in the tank’s side.  
He was interrupted by a braying roar echoing through the gully, rattling off the walls of the tank. The colour drained from the faces of everyone squeezed deeply into the tank, and nobody dared speak. Atop the gully the raptors were chirping and barking to each other in a panic – little pebbles and other detritus were scattering down as they scrabbled along the cliffside. One of them fell, and landed on its side with a crunch next to the tank.

“What the hell is happening up there?” demanded Hugo.

There was another roar. Another raptor fell to the ground next to the tank. With those that had fallen previously, the bodies were starting to pile up around the tank. 

Two more raptors fell to the gully floor. Taking a gamble, Smith rose to stand with sore legs and darted to the hatch in the roof of the tank. He creaked it open gently, just enough so that he could see the top of the gully wall. And then a raptor hit the tank’s roof, slamming down on top of the hatch, and Smith was smashed to the floor in a daze. Olive screamed.

“What’s happening?” Hugo said, helping Smith to his feet. Smith was checking his skull for signs of trauma – he was relieved that there was no blood.

“It looks like a tyrannosaurus rex. It’s covered in feathers, and blood, and it’s fighting the raptors!” said Smith, shaking off the dizziness.

“What? Why?”

“It’s got two people on the back riding it.”

“Riding it? That’s insane,” said Hugo, checking Smith’s head.

“He’s right, look,” said Jane, nodding at something out of the window.

Hugo stared out of the window, agog. The tyrannosaurus was roaring, charging down one side of the gully, darting amongst the bigger trees and smashing aside the smaller ones. It was knocking down raptors, another one of which fell from the gully wall, but the wall was shorter at the entrance so it survived. Hugo was too stunned to think of shooting it. The tyrannosaurus reached the mouth of the gully and reared back, roaring, as two raptors leapt upon it from either side. It was hard to make out since the tyrannosaur was standing with the sun at its back, but there did seem to be a pair of humans on its back. One was grappling with a raptor, riding atop the tyrannosaurus’s back, while the other struggled with the harness. The silhouetted figure wrestling the raptor appeared to have some kind of object, maybe a dagger, which it was trying to stab into the delicately balanced raptor. The ape was better at climbing though, and with one hand it clung to the feathers and slashed away with the other. The raptor tumbled off, trying to get a grip on the tyrannosaur’s feathers but failing, and landing unharmed on the ground. Then the tyrannosaur stepped on it, pinning it to the ground, and scraping its foot along the ground until the raptor was pinned beneath its claws.

“Oh my god!” exclaimed Jane.

“Start shooting the raptors up there,” said Hugo, pointing up the gully hill where the raptors were streaming down towards the larger dinosaur.

“Follow us!” shouted a man’s voice from outside, from the back of the dinosaur.

Hugo practically leapt into the driver’s seat of one side, turned the ignition key, and started the engine. The tank roared into life, and Hugo put the pedal to the floor. Mud was churned into a froth beneath the mechanical treads as the tank squealed into motion, rumbling towards the gully entrance. The battling tyrannosaur stepped lightly aside. The humans in the back of the tank managed to pick off a dozen raptors as they pulled out of the short valley. The tyrannosaur started sprinting away from them in long galloping strides. In the driver’s seat, Hugo struggled briefly to turn the tank and then sped after them.

“Who is that?” said Smith over the engine’s roar.

“I don’t know,” said Jane.

“Guys, is that Nellie on the back of that thing?” shouted Olive, pointing at the dinosaur.

The raptors were falling back. The tyrannosaur had taken them by surprise, and with everything else in the day they were prepared to let the tank go for now then hunt it down again later. The tracks were so deep in the jungle floor that the real trouble with tracking them would be to avoid falling in one.

For half an hour the tank sped after the enigmatic riders, weaving around thick trees and crushing bushes. They finally stopped in a wide clearing dominated by the mighty trunk of some ancient tree that loomed above both the tyrannosaur and the tank. The tank creaked and clicked and pinged as it cooled down, and the occupants all climbed curiously out of the main hatch. Hugo took his rifle with him, staring wild-eyed around the treeline. The others all stared in disbelief at Nellie as she dismounted the dinosaur.

The dinosaur was lit from beneath by the lights of the tank, twitching its head back and forth as it inspected the humans hungrily. 

“Oh my god, we thought you were dead!” began Olive.

“Are there any other survivors?” said Smith.

“Not that I know of,” said Nellie, “This is Tom. He lives here. He saved me, and also you guys.”

“They were gathering boulders,” said Tom sternly, descending after Nellie, “They were going to pile up stones around the valley entrance and block you in. Then they would wait to see how long it took you to starve to death.”

“No raptor is that smart,” said Olive.

Tom didn’t reply, he only patted Jaguar on the haunch. It looked around at Tom, blinking slowly, ignoring the other humans. Tom dipped some fingers into one of his pouches and fished out a dried piece of meat, then walked around to the front of the dinosaur, giving a wide berth to its head. He tossed the dried meat into the air in front of the dinosaur’s face. The dinosaur went cross-eyed briefly as it tracked the scrap’s trajectory and then quickly snapped the meat out of the air, clicking together its terrifying jaws with mechanical precision.

Olive’s face turned pale, and Hugo was impressed.

“There’s been a lot of mutations,” said Nellie, watching Tom’s face subtly display pride in his terrifying steed.

“Is there anywhere safe?” Smith asked.

“I’ve got a few shelters around,” said Tom, “I have one stronghold nearby with enough space for everyone. We can probably make it there before nightfall.”

*

“This was one of the first places I built,” said Tom as the dinosaur strode along, “And I’ve been adding to it ever since. I never expected guests.”

“Is that apologising?” Nellie said. She was riding in front of Tom on the dinosaur, with his strong legs either side of her, holding her to the dinosaur. She was almost in his lap. Between her own legs the torso of the tyrannosaurus vibrated with each heavy footfall, and powerful muscles slid around beneath the soft, feathery coat. His long, powerful arms and strong hands were holding reins of the harness, either side of her. If she wanted to she could rest her arms on his, like an armchair. Instead  
she clung to the tyrannosaurus feathers with increasing awareness of the texture. The air of the jungle was rapidly cooling, drawing the heat from her flushed cheeks.

“There’s only two rooms, really,” said Tom, “I’m putting them all in one of them, and I’m taking the other. Do you want to stay in their room, or…?” he said, awkwardly.

“What are you asking?” Nellie said, trying to keep a mischievous grin from her face. She slowly allowed the motion of the dinosaur to jostle her backwards further, until she could feel his tense torso against her back.

“I know you’ve had a terrible day. You might appreciate the company of your friends. I wouldn’t though, if it was me. Your friends seem naïve and unprepared.”

“So was I, when you found me,” she said, feeling safe as she surrounded herself with him.

“We’re here,” said Tom. He dismounted stiffly, tugging at his dinosaur-skin trousers as he clambered down the tyrannosaurus.

The tank rumbled to a halt behind the dinosaur. Tom flipped another scrap of meat into Jaguar’s mouth as Nellie struggled weak-kneed to the ground. Hugo popped open the tank lid and leaned out.

“Where’s this fortress?” he demanded.

“You can leave the tank here. You’re better off sleeping in the trees,” he said, pointing upwards into the treetops. In the lights of the tank they could just about make out a shape of some kind of structure – planks and ropes amongst the thick branches, several separate structures, planks hammered into the trunk itself as a ladder, and even the silhouetted shape of some rope bridges.

“I’ll guard the tank,” said Hugo.

“The raptors will come in the night, wait until you sleep, figure out your door latch, burst in, and rip you into bitesize pieces,” said Tom, his tone still flat and indifferent, “If you sleep in the trees it’s impossible for them to climb up, and you can take shots at them for as long as you want.”

“Won’t they just starve us out again?” asked Hugo.

“They’ve tried before, but they’re always interrupted by bigger dinosaurs who like eating raptors. For example,” said Tom, gesturing at Jaguar.

“Are we vulnerable to fire?” asked Smith, following Hugo out of the tank.

“They’re still deathly afraid of fire. Maybe one day,” said Tom thoughtfully, as he threw an entire handful of meat to Jaguar. Then he pulled some of the knots under the dinosaur’s body, and the harness slipped from the tyrannosaur’s body. The dinosaur blinked sleepily at Tom for a few seconds, then Tom whistled a secret signal and the dinosaur turned to lumber away.

“Wait, what’s going to guard us?” whined Olive.

“Guard against what? The raptors can’t get us,” said Smith.

“Exactly,” Tom agreed, “But there’s still snakes and spiders and scorpions, though. So sleep lightly. Organise a watch rota if you want, but none of them kill you if you leave them alone.”

And with that he clambered up onto the trunk of the tree, effortlessly ascending into the high treetops with all the ease of walking. Nellie followed him up next.

She arrived at the top of the ladder to find Tom lighting something like a tikki torch – pitch-soaked grass bundled around a several-meter-high length of bamboo. He was using a plastic cigarette lighter that had long ago run out of fuel, but somehow still made enough spark to catch the torch. She interestedly watched him focus intently on the delicate task until the flame erupted on the torch. Then he used that torch to walk down the wooden walkway and light the other torches.

The walkway surrounded what looked like a crude bird’s nest, with twigs and thatch woven together and reinforced with mud. There was a circular doorway big enough for people to walk through, and a tiny window hole. The wooden floor of planks had been hammered deep into the wood of the tree and only creaked slightly when she walked on it. It was reinforced from beneath with sturdy boughs and thick arches of wood, but there were no handrails. The same dried flowers that decorated the other hut, where she had woken up, were also used to frame the door and window.

“I took the foam mattresses from the old accommodation, where the researchers used to live,” explained Tom as the others climbed the trunk and joined them.

“Sounds comfy,” said Nellie lightly.

There were two other mud huts built onto wooden platforms – one was further up in the branches of their current tree with a ladder leading directly up into it, and another was visible across a rope bridge in a tree nearby.

“How long did all this take?” asked Smith.

“You can all sleep in this one,” said Tom, ignoring Smith, “There’s water bottles at the back. If you need to go to the toilet, on the other side of the tree there’s a hole in the platform.”

“Where will you be?” demanded Olive.

“Just up there. Scream if you need me,” said Tom, gesturing vaguely to the upper mud hut.

“Is there toilet paper?” Hugo said.

“I have some in my kit bag,” said Smith, hefting the canvas duffel bag he had brought from the tank.

Tom was still ignoring them, and clambered further up the ladder into the tree branches. The other survivors all looked at each other, clueless in the strange turn of events after a deeply traumatising day.

“I just need to check something with him,” said Nellie, and followed him up the tree.

At the top of the ladder, the first thing she saw was his naked back. He was taking off his leather clothing in the light of a wind-up electric lamp. She blushed immediately.

“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled, as he turned in surprise.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I should be the one apologising. All this time alone has made me quite awkward, it would seem.”

“You’re not that awkward,” she said, climbing the rest of the way into the room. He barely reacted, the lean muscles of his toned stomach and broad shoulders seeming to glow in the dim electric light. Something colourful caught her eye in the corner of the tree-hut. 

Next to the simple mattress and a plastic bottle of water, the label long since peeled off, there was a little shrine. There was a piece of cardboard surrounded by flowers and jars – inside the jars there had once been some kind of crude paint, but it had dried now into a coloured sediment at the bottom of the jars. Tom had used berries, flowers, and presumably insect shells to create pigment. On the cardboard he had painted several portraits, but they were crude and clumsy. Nellie barely recognised them as human faces.

“Friends and relatives,” he said, explaining, “I know they’re awful. I was never an artist. But I just needed something physical to remember.”

“I thought you said you didn’t miss people?” she said, stepping closer to him in the torchlight, lowering her voice to a whisper. She could smell his body in the close air of the hut.

“I haven’t been back here in a long time,” he said, staring at the shrine. It felt like he was refusing to make eye contact. She reached out and touched his chin, gently turning his head to face her. His blue eyes flashed defiance and anger at the contact, and she gasped as he stared into her.

The physical contact in this intimate space was too much for him, and he was suddenly seized by a wild animal passion. He kissed her fiercely, which made her squeak in surprise, but she kissed him back with the same abandon. His breath was hot on her lips, and his arms seized her roughly. She felt herself being lifted up, and in response she wrapped her legs around his hard torso. He gasped for breath as their lips wrestled, their tongues playing over each other. He fell backwards in surprise, onto the mattress, and she got her legs out of the way quickly enough that she just ended up lying on top of him. He groaned eagerly beneath the weight of her body, and she felt him stiffen behind the many layers of fabric and dino-hide between their bodies. Too many layers.

They could both hear the other survivors in the hut beneath them, chattering quietly as they discussed their day. They were all agreeing they were still too horrified to sleep, but as Nellie kissed Tom’s neck and thrilled as he arched his back and groaned in response she also heard a few of them start to snore. Just a few moments later as Tom ran his hands over her waist and hips, slipping his hands beneath her jacket, it sounded like they were all asleep. She whimpered as he cupped her breast and teased her nipple, annoying clothes in the way. They both pulled the jacket off her, and she stretched her back and pushed herself into his chest, aching to touch as much of him as physically possible. He had one strong hand on her back, his arm encircling her, pulling her down to grind on him with a desperate passion.  
Hard-wearing survival gear is uncomfortable to wear, let alone feel someone’s body against your own. Tom kicked off his boots, but Nellie had to squirm over Tom’s legs to tug away his dinosaur-skin leg-coverings. Beneath them he wore absolutely nothing. She had to stand and hop to pull off her own boots and combat trousers. Tom had several scars across this calves and thighs, and another deep gash across his stomach and liver. He also had an unreasonably large cock that stood upright and thick. He caught her looking at them, and growled playfully as he caught hold of her hand and pulled her back down onto the mattress.

“How did you get them?” she giggled, as she fell onto the mattress, lying next to him.

Instead of answering he kissed her chest and shoulder, pulling the shoulder strap of her vest down. He ran one hand across her stomach, grasping her hip. His prickly stubble tickled her neck as he once again kissed her deeply, hungrily, as if the decades of loneliness could disappear if he gorged himself on her body. She kissed him back, holding the back of his head, stroking his neck, treasuring him. His naked chest loomed over her, the air of the night caressing their bodies, raising bumps on her arms and hardening his nipples. He bit her on the shoulder, and she scratched her short fingernails down his back. He bridled, arching his back, one leg straightening reflexively. With her other hand she reached down and softly stroked the shaft of his cock, which caused him to buck and tremble even more. He growled through clenched teeth and forcefully pinned her opposite shoulder to the mattress, and fiercely kissed every inch of her chest and breasts. She moaned and gasped and writhed beneath his thick muscles.

She eagerly placed one hand behind her shoulder and tugged on his shoulderblade, trying to coax him onto her, and into her. Suddenly he was swinging his other leg over hers so that he was between them now, and staring intensely into her eyes as he entered her. She stroked his face as he slowly slid his cock deep inside of her, her eyebrows creasing with the sensation, her lips pouting reflexively, her hips thrusting up desperately to meet him, a tiny squeal emerging from deep within her throat. He ground into her fiercely, grunting with effort and passion, hot breath steaming from his mouth. Once he almost roared with release, but she put her hand playfully over his mouth, and between high-pitched gasps she giggled and shushed him. He laughed wildly, quietly, and slowed down. She felt his stiffness building up within her, growing thicker and larger until it felt like she would burst. Her own body was rippling with waves of pleasure, a fiery heat building within her at each new thrust. Now that he had slowed down, she allowed herself to luxuriate in it, letting all the horror of the day melt away in the sensation of the moment.

Suddenly she shuddered violently, and her grip on his shoulder blade tightened with a spasm. She dug her nails into his muscles and tried not to cry out into the wild jungle. He gasped as he felt her tighten around him, bucking and writhing as she bit her lip and whimpered loudly. With a questioning look through her eyelashes, fluttering lightly above her reddened face, she realised he hadn’t come yet.

“Please, turn me over,” she gasped. He grunted with joy as he withdrew from her, grasped her hips with terrifyingly strong hands and span her violently over, pulling her up and onto him. He re-entered her with a groan of renewed pleasure, and she moaned softly, pushing down onto him, hands scrabbling for purchase on the slippery mattress. As the sensation returned between the two of them, they both came together, Nellie biting her lip once again, and Tom throwing back his head with a deep and satisfied groan. His throbbing head pulsed deep inside of her. With one hand she pushed her hair from her face, struggling to breathe.

He slowly withdrew from her and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He lay down next to her while she flattened out onto her front, letting the cold night air caress her. Every inch of her skin was tingling, and she was sore in the most satisfying way. He panted with relief, each deep lungful of air expanding his mighty chest like a blacksmith’s bellows. In the soft light of the electric torch, she watched his steady gaze. He was staring absently at the ceiling, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Are you… how are you feeling?” she asked, one hand reaching out to stroke his shoulder. He jumped nervously, woken from his deep thoughts.

“Incredible,” he said, turning over to look at her, the same hunter’s intensity now focusing on her. She felt herself growing excited again.

“There’s some good things about being around people, maybe?” she said with a mischievous grin. He encircled her with one strong arm, pulling her close. She squeaked happily.

*

Three black speedboats powered noisily across the breaking surf and were beached, sand crunching beneath their prows. Each one carried three private mercenaries, wearing Kevlar armour and diving suits, bristling with weapons. Each speedboat also bristled, with a gun turret on each side and radio aerials sprouting from the back. Riding at the front of the lead boat was a figure wearing a business suit and peaked sailor’s cap, gleaming and clean. In his hand he held a briefcase. He kept his balance as the speedboat landed and then he hopped down onto the sand, tutting at the dampness that seeped into his shiny shoes. He squelched and crunched up the beach as the soldiers fanned out to stand guard.

“Where are they?” he asked the soldier’s commander. The commander only shrugged – he was here to collect the mission, and if the mission didn’t arrive on time then he was under orders not to seek them out on the island. If there was no sign of their survival then the company was entirely prepared to withhold further resources. 

They wanted to limit their risk on a potential folly. The commander gazed out at the ocean, letting his eyes linger on the reassuring silhouette of his naval battleship anchored nearby to the island.

“Nothing on the radio yet, sir,” barked one of the soldiers from the boat.

“Sir!” exclaimed one of the guarding soldiers, indicating with his weapon at the treeline. Between two thick trunks, whose roots clung to the sand and held back the thick vines and foliage, a terrifying creature emerged. It roared victoriously as it emerged into the warm sunshine, shaking its feathers.

“Weapons hot!” ordered the commander, and the soldiers all clicked off their safety catches as they aimed at the beast.

“Wait,” said the businessman, squinting at the creature.

“What?” roared the commander, furious and terrified.

“Look, there’s people on it,” said the businessman.

The tyrannosaurus caught sight of the humans on the beach and slowly turned towards them.

“I don’t see people,” said the commander, also squinting, taking a deep breath to give the order to open fire and cover the boat’s retreat.

“They’re riding it! See the harness?” said the businessman.

The dinosaur lumbered closer, clearly taking its time. Behind it, with the growl of an angry engine, the tank emerged from between the trees. It was following the dinosaur, equally slowly.

“What the hell?” demanded the businessman and the commander, both at the same time.

The tyrannosaurus pounded down the beach, careful of its footing on the loose, dry sand. On the saddle, Nellie rode before Tom, comfortably held in his arms as he bore the reins. The tank rumbled up behind them, with cheers coming from the slatted windows. The dinosaur ceased its progress over fifty meters from the beached boats – still terrifyingly huge even at that distance – but the tank rumbled closer, and pulled up alongside them. The engine clinked and cooled, and for a second there was nothing but the deafening crush of the waves, and the shallow breathing of the soldiers aiming down their automatic rifles and gun placements.

“Hello!” exclaimed Nellie happily, sliding down from the back of the t-rex.

“Doctor Guernica? What happened to you?” demanded the businessman. She was wearing a tight waistcoat-like harness made from the scales of dinosaur skin that gleamed in the sunlight, over her vest, but it disappeared beneath her black combat trousers. Her feet were bare. From the back of the dinosaur she was joined by a filthy wild-looking man who the soldiers took aim at instead of the dinosaur.

“Hold fire!” shouted Hugo, emerging from the tank hatch, leaping to the beach. The soldiers were suddenly uncertain, some lowering their weapons.

“What happened?” asked the commander.

“It was a massacre, but this man saved us,” said Smith, also emerging.

“A massacre?” said the businessman.

“Raptors,” said Olive, exiting the tank followed by the rest of the survivors.

“Is this all that’s left?” said the businessman, aghast.

“Raptors came and killed everybody,” confirmed Hugo.

“They got smarter,” said Smith.

“That’s impossible,” said the businessman.

Tom laughed. He laughed long and hard, and it was cold and angry. The soldiers who had lowered their weapons raised them again, and the tyrannosaurus huffed noisily in alarm at the sudden coordinated motion.

“If you hang around on the beach for long enough you’ll get to see the impossible dinosaurs for yourself,” Tom said with icy fury, “They tracked us during the night and they’ve been watching from the shadows, wondering what we’re doing today. Now there’s a nice juicy buffet of fresh meat with all you people here, and outside of your steel worm even. A tempting prize for insane carnivores with vastly superior numbers.”

“We have your data, and plenty of samples,” said Nellie.

“Well, alright then, let’s get out of here,” said the businessman, his face turning pale, “Are there really no other survivors?”

“Are you calling her a liar?” demanded Tom.

“Of course not. Well, if this is everyone, then let’s load up the boats and go home. Troops,” he said, and nodded at the tank. The soldiers started approaching it, eager to strip it of all the supplies and load everything they could into the boats – anything too big for a boat was going to be left behind.

“What shall we do with him, sir?” the commander asked the businessman, nodding at Tom.

“He saved us. He should come too,” said Hugo.

“Take him back to the world,” agreed Olive.

“No,” said Tom, still angry but with fear in his voice now as he backed up the beach towards Jaguar, “I like it here. I want to stay here. This is my home.”

“Fine, whatever,” said the businessman, “It would be a paperwork nightmare anyway. I just want to get out of here. Everybody else, onto the boats. Troops, take what you can.”

“Actually, I’m staying too,” said Nellie suddenly, her voice coming out in a rush.

“What?” demanded the businessman.

“Absolutely not,” said the commander.

Tom only had an expression of pure disbelief on his face, and Nellie couldn’t tell if it was joy or anger, or maybe despair at having a home invader decide to stay.

“If that’s okay?” she asked him, softly.

“Yes, that’s okay,” he replied, equally softly, glee filling his cold blue eyes with a sparkling brilliance. She had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Are you sure?” said Hugo.

“The tank has a satellite phone and a long-range radio. If we need anything, I can call for it. I can be a remote researcher. There’s a lot more fieldwork we need to do. There’s lots more samples that we should take, really. The amount of mutation and development needs to be thoroughly catalogued. The timeframe of the original mission was hopelessly optimistic,” said Nellie, thinking quickly.

“My orders were to take back every survivor,” said the commander.

“Apart from these two, apparently,” said the businessman, stroking his chin ostentatiously.

“Sir?”

“If there’s as much mutation as she claims, we will indeed need to conduct a more thorough survey. Who knows where this research could lead? Very well, Doctor Guernica. I assent to your proposal. What else do you require?”

“There’s a full suite of research and laboratory equipment in the tank,” she said, “And cutlery, and survival supplies. If you leave it here, we can take good care of it.”

“That represents a substantial investment…” said the businessman uncertainly.

“Most of it we ditched in the jungle while we were trying to escape,” said Olive, “So it’s out there somewhere in the trees. Hardly anything left in the tank now.”

“Fuel would be nice, though,” said Nellie.

“And toilet paper,” added Tom.

The commander promised he would send a boat back to drop off the supplies, and then loaded the remaining survivors into the passenger seats at the centre of each craft. There had been room for all the mission personnel plus the extra supplies – now there were only a handful of people left, and the space seemed to dwarf them. The soldiers pushed the boats back out onto the ocean, then waded out and boarded too. The speedboats roared away noisily.

“We shouldn’t stay long, the raptors will take advantage,” Tom warned. Nellie reached out and held his hand. They waited for the boats to return. The soldiers had sent a dozen gigantic plastic barrels of diesel for the tank, which the soldiers clumsily hoisted out of the boat and gruntingly lowered to the sand. They also had several dozen palettes of toilet paper – a significant portion of the stores from the battleship. One of the soldiers also handed Nellie a large duffel bag, with a discreet smile.

“Apparently a present from Olive? For saving their lives,” the soldier said by way of explanation. Nellie opened the duffel bag. Inside there were condoms – what must have been every condom on the battleship. Nellie laughed, and Tom blushed.


End file.
